London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

Pro-Europeans muststop turning a "blind eye" to the failings of the EU and make thecase for reform or the country will "sleepwalk" into aneconomy-wrecking exit, Ed Miliband will tell business leaders.

The Labour leader
will tell the CBI conference that pressure on David Cameron from eurosceptic
Tories had forced the Prime Minister into "negotiations that will not
deliver" for the repatriation of swathes of powers.

Instead he should
be concentrating on "building alliances" to agree reforms and ensure
Britain did not lose out when eurozone countries deepened their ties in a new
two-tier Europe, he will suggest.

Weekend opinion
polls showed a clear public majority for cutting ties with Brussels as pressure
mounted on the Prime Minister to set out plans for a referendum on the issue.

He faces a tricky
summit on Thursday when leaders gather to thrash out the EU's future budget,
and he has threatened to veto anything other than a real-terms freeze.

Labour joined
forces with Tory rebels to inflict a Commons defeat on the Government by
backing a real-terms cut in the 2014-20 package - leading to accusations of
opportunism.

But in a bid to win
over the business vote, Mr Miliband will say it is right to press for reform in
some areas while remaining "passionate" that membership of the Union
is firmly in the national interest.

Quitting the EU
would leave Britain "competing on low-wages and low-skills, an off-shore
low-value economy, a race to the bottom", he will say, pushing the
economic, political and strategic case for membership.

Crises in the
eurozone, soaring unemployment, and a budget more suited to the 1950s than the
21st century had however shaken confidence in the Union.

"Too many have
turned a blind eye to these failings, believing their understandable real
passion for the case for Britain being in Europe should mean a passionate
defence of the institutions of the European Union.

"The answer is
not just to make the same old case for the European Union more loudly. We need
to argue the case in a new way, not simply assume it as an article of
faith."

New alliances were
required to push plans for growth and jobs, re-target spending towards
infrastructure, energy and innovation, complete the single market and change
state aid rules, he will suggest.

But a rising tide
of public scepticism and calls to consider a future outside the EU - including
from within the cabinet - had led allies in Europe to believe the "Britain
is heading to the exit door".

"Those of us,
like me, who passionately believe that Britain is stronger in the European
Union cannot be silent in a situation like this.

"I will not
allow our country to sleepwalk toward exit because it would be a betrayal of
our national interest.

"Reforming the
European Union will be difficult, it will require building alliances, and it
will have its frustrations. But I am certain it is better than leaving: for
business, for jobs, for wealth creation. Our future lies within a reformed
European Union that will help us build One Nation."

Senior Tory MP
David Davis yesterday called for a double referendum - one to approve a list of
powers for the UK to seek to seize back and then an in/out public poll once
they had been negotiated.

Mr Davis, a former
Europe minister and leadership rival to Mr Cameron, said the first vote should
be held within a year, before the next elections to the European Parliament in
2014.

Having a
renegotiation list backed by a public vote - he predicted it would get the
support of 70% of electors on a massive turnout of 90% - would be a "huge
negotiating lever" in Brussels, he said.

"We have got
to, somehow, dramatically change our relationship with Europe. Not a little bit
of a power here and a little bit of a power there. We have got to bring back
lots of powers," he said.

Conservative Party
chairman Grant Shapps said: "Ed Miliband and Labour have zero credibility
when it comes to reforming the EU.

"Labour gave
away half of our rebate for no Common Agricultural Policy reform in return,
signed up to a series of inflation-busting EU spending rises, and even today
oppose our new law to ensure no more powers can be passed to Brussels without
the say of the British people.

"And once
again Ed Miliband fails to say how he would deal with the deficit that Labour
left behind."